Yukons Don’t Know Snow

People in my part of the country do not know how to drive in snow. Snow is coming down steadily, the roads are slick, and I have an idiot tailgating me. I begin to brake on a hill, and hesitate to look in my mirror because I know he’s probably spinning. Sure enough, he is slamming on his brakes and going sideways. No problem, except for the Yukon behind him currently rolling over. That’s right, the nutcase caused another car to stop suddenly, slide up into the bank, and roll over on its side.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a car roll over, let alone a big old GMC Yukon, but it’s a very amusing sight (especially when no one gets hurt). It really puts things into perspective. These vehicles we travel in each day are just boxes to get us around the planet. You can have a $2000 junker box or a $100,000 sporty box, but the snow can roll either one.

Hacking Thoughtfulness

Strange title, I know. If I were to guess, most people do not think of me as a very thoughtful person. This is an example of the psychological phenomenon that people tend to make internal attributions about others.

However, the problem is not that I am a selfish, uncaring person, it is rather that I am a forgetful one. It often occurs to me that I should write someone a note, or leave a comment on so-and-so’s blog, or write a birthday card to an old buddy. After having the thought and deciding to do it, it somehow manages to check itself off my mental to-do list so that I consider it done.

Try planning to be thoughtful. If you carry a Moleskine with you, or even index cards, you can use them to write these things down. When you think of a thoughtful deed that you can do for someone, write it down. Don’t spend so much time thinking about how nice it would be, and how they would appreciate it so much, just write it down. Chances are these thoughtful ideas won’t occur at a time when you are able to do them. If write them down, you can put them out of your head. Later, when you have time, you can sit down and pull out your list of thoughtful things to do for people, and actually carry them through.  If you follow this technique and you have nothing to write down, then you can rest assured that you are probably not a thoughtful person .

Cleaning

I do not like to clean. I like things clean, but I really don’t enjoy taking time out of my schedule to work on making something clean. Lately I have been trying to train myself that leaning is not a waste of time, it is a fresh start toward a more organized life.
Here are some tips that I personally discovered to be helpful to someone who thinks cleaning is… well, hard:

1. Shut your dang laptop. ‘Nuf said.
2. One of the fundamental parts of cleaning is getting rid of some junk that you don’t use anymore. But if you are a sentimental pack-rat like me, you may clean your entire room and end up with only 1 nice little cubic foot of uncompressed garbage. Instead of asking yourself, “can I get rid of this?”, instead ask yourself “can I do without this?” I did just that and found myself filling a garbage bag up fast. It caused me to get rid of things that I was saving just in case I needed them (like my large plastic bag collection).
3. Another idea is surrounding yourself with some new things (as in “not used”, not “additional”). We all like new things better than old things. If you have a bunch of old blank notebooks lying around (I’m referring to the ones that you made blank by tearing the 5 used pages out of the front), give them to a friend or someone else who could use them, and only save the ones that have all 70 pages in and are completely new. Open a fresh pack of paper clips instead of using the old multicolored ones you’ve been reusing since kindergarten. It is OK to conserve, but it is also OK to treat yourself to some new things once and a while.
4. Something else that helps me is rearranging an item of furniture. This isn’t always an option, but moving a large piece of furniture to a new location gives me a sense of making a fresh start. This has psychological affect on my spirit and makes me more interested in cleaning.

Depending on what type of person you are, this post might be nothing more than a large chunk of obviousness. That is fine, just go flex your cleaning skills while us A.D.D. types talk over coffee and sympathize with each other about our cleaning woes.